Eva’s Sto­ry: A Sur­vivor’s Tale by the Step­sis­ter of Anne Frank

Many of you may have read the 1988 edi­tion of this book, which begins where Anne Frank’s ends. The girls were close friends in child­hood, but Anne, her sis­ter Mar­got, and their moth­er suc­cumbed, while Eva and her moth­er sur­vived. For those new to this title, it is an entire account of the Holo­caust as it occurred in the Vien­na- Hol­land jour­ney — the Nazi inva­sion, hid­ing in Ams­ter­dam and being deport­ed to Auschwitz- Birke­nau. There is a full account of the author’s expe­ri­ences there. They sur­vived because of the sup­port that the moth­er and daugh­ter, and her mother’s friend who had an impor­tant posi­tion in the infir­mary, gave to each oth­er despite the star­va­tion, ill­ness, and relo­ca­tions. The post­war peri­od is equal­ly inter­est­ing — their surf­ing the fluc­tu­at­ing tides of Russ­ian advances and retreats, and final­ly vic­to­ry with its own chal­lenges — espe­cial­ly the imme­di­ate post-war peri­od in Rus­sia among the var­i­ous camps that were con­vert­ed into hos­pi­tals and DP camps. This has always been one of the best told accounts of this peri­od of his­to­ry and bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the courage of the human spir­it and the phe­nom­e­non known as ​“camp shvesters” or camp sis­ters It made all the dif­fer­ence between sur­vival or not. This edi­tion includes an inter­view with Eva Schloss who was reunit­ed with Otto Frank after the war, and her moth­er even­tu­al­ly mar­ried him. Grades 7 – 12.

Mar­cia W. Pos­ner, Ph.D., of the Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al and Tol­er­ance Cen­ter of Nas­sau Coun­ty, is the library and pro­gram direc­tor. An author and play­wright her­self, she loves review­ing for JBW and read­ing all the oth­er reviews and arti­cles in this mar­velous periodical.